Poe - Design Binding

This was a project for my book binding class. I had one of the Border's Classics Edgar Allen Poe books, and decided to design a binding for it. The book was bound in full leather, with cloth onlays. The cloth was pasted out and crumpled for texture. Than dried and painted on with acrylics. The theme was The Mask of Red Death. This is the end result.

Also, these are some mighty fine end bands if I do say so.

Leather Reback - PC4 Paper

This particular book originally had laced on boards. The board were now detached, but were important to keep. Since the original leather was delaminating from the boards, I decided to remove it and attach it to new boards. 

 

The first step was to clean and line the spine. Then I sewed on end bands, constructed end papers, and cut new boards. I attached the boards and put the book in a finishing press, where I molded a damp strip PC4 paper over the spine. This dried over night.
I was able to remove the original leather from the boards gently with a spatula. I also removed and kept the turn-ins. I glued down and turned in the new PC4 spine piece, infilled the boards, and glued down the original leather and turn-ins. Where sections of the turn-ins were missing, I glued down PC4 strips. I lined the board edges and missing areas with Japanese tissue. Then glued down the end papers, and toned the tissue to match. This was then end result.

Paper Reback

This book was originally bound in marbled paper. The spine had delaminated and pieces were missing. The corners were also badly bumped.

Rather than reconstructing the spine and attempting to tone to match, I decided to attach a new spine piece made from linen lined Morike.  First I removed the remaining spine piece, and cleaned and lined the spine. Then I attempted to re-round it gently with a hammer. I lifted the paper on the boards, and trimmed it back slightly. I also lifted the end papers to make room for the turn ins. I attached the new spine piece, turned it in and pressed the book with jointed boards. This was the end result.

Leather Reback - Wooden Boards

This was a book from the Ranke collection at Syracuse. The spine was deteriorating and the boards were detached. It was not a good candidate for rebinding because of the level of tooling on the boards. The boards were also wooden, which is not common, and therefore should be preserved. This was the original condition of the book.

I cleaned the spine with methyl cellulose and lined it with Japanese tissue and linen. I made some page repairs with heat set tissue, and resewed the end bands. I lifted the original leather at the spine and corners, attached new, and repaired missing areas or cracks with Japanese tissue. Finally, I toned the tissue to match and applied a coat of SC 6000. This is the end result.

Note: For this particular book, the SC 6000 was a mistake. It caused the tissue areas to shine more than the original leather surface, even after a coating of Klucel G. I would advise against the use of SC 6000 if the original material had lost sheen or if the repaired area is very large.